Sandra Oh Credits Grey’s Anatomy for Her TV Comeback

It’s hard not to be happy that actress Sandra Oh will be gracing our TV screens each week in the new BBC America series Killing Eve. At the same time, it’s hard not to be sad, too — the new role makes her return to Grey’s Anatomy as the inimitable Cristina Yang even less likely. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, though, Oh gave due credit to the time she spent in Shondaland.

“There are so many profound things that Grey’s gave me. I always feel like [it’s a question of] how do you want to grow?” she told THR of fielding pilot offers since she left ABC. “That decade on Grey’s was such an important experience of my life that the next thing that I was going to do had to feel as important and as interesting.”

Which is precisely why, Oh says, she turned down every pilot that came her way until Killing Eve. That’s when everything finally clicked into place. “When I read the pilot, I immediately got her voice,” Oh said of Killing Eve‘s creator, Phoebe Waller-Bridge. “And from our first read-through, I felt confident in it. Did I fall in love? I did. I found the right person.”

Suffice it to say that Oh’s new character, Eve, doesn’t have a lot in common with the Cristina Yang we all came to know and love at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. Based on the novellas by Luke Jennings, Killing Eve centers on an assassin (played by Jodie Comer) and the security services operative tasked with tracking her down (played by Oh).

For Oh, it’s a role that was worth waiting for — and one she may not have waited for, if not for her career-defining stretch on Grey’s. “Oh, absolutely, yes, [Grey’s] gave me the time and confidence to wait,” she said. And judging by the advance response and reviews for Killing Eve, Oh made a wise choice. The show, which debuts on Sunday night, was picked up for a second season before the first even aired.

As for the age-old (or, like, four-year-old) question of whether Oh will ever revisit Grey’s, well, it’s not the best news for fans of the medical drama. Citing how firmly she has stepped into the shoes of a new character on Killing Eve, Oh pointed out that it “would be hard to step out of them and go back into an old pair of shoes that might be honestly too tight.”

But, hey, that means she’s fully committed to Killing Eve, right? While we might not be able to get Cristina Yang back, we can trust Oh’s creative instincts and throw ourselves behind the next fierce, complex and kickass character she brings to our screens.